Fourth of July means Fireworks!!!!! I am sure there are rules against shooting explosives over you neighbors house but where I live, it seems to be more of a suggestion than a rule. I have seen fireworks from a distance when flying and they always seemed a bit puny but I had never gotten up close. Well not too close. I had heard it was a good show so this year CC and I decided to have a look for ourselves. Our plan was to cruise out to the beach and circle the show. Our city used to do one big display but during COVID it was changed to several smaller ones. This has actually worked well with more people being able to get to see a dsiplay closer to home and allowed us several options.
We headed out to the airport around dusk and were ready to depart about 10 minutes before the show. This may sound like we were cutting it close but the show was 3 minutes away. I departed and was handed off to departure where I picked up a code and wandered over to the Beach. I went up to 1300' so as to provide some seperation with other traffic already circling. No circling would imply some order, they were mulling. I was going to need to work hard to avoid them as I was significantly faster than the 70-80 knots they were doing.
I figured we would all be talking to approach because we were right up against an active squawk and talk TFR but no. We had 3 planes talking to no one in no semblance of a pattern. We did a few turns around but I was keeping the controller really busy calling traffic which we had in sight. I was busy lapping them and trying to guess what they would do next. I decided it would be safer to see another set of fireworks so we cruised a few minutes over to the mall where we had our own private show. After a few minutes there, we cruise over to the West bank to see that set. The mall was a bit smaller but the river was as good as the beach.
We had both of these to ourselves so that was really nice. We could also see the Downtown ones to the North. Heading over I asked for a Navy JAX class D transition and approach said there was a blanket approval for the class D transitions but to stay off the runways... We caught the finale on the West side which was right around 9:20. There was one more show down in Saint Augustine at 9:30 so off we went. It's amazing how fast you get around town at 150 mph. Arriving, there was a sheriffs copter who was talking on the SGJ CTAF and he was already in a counterclockwise orbit. We joined the circuit and watched a bit. We then had another plane join and luckily she was talking too.
Even with the talking she did not quite go where she said she would which meant some careful watching as we lapped here. It was getting busy in the sky so we cruised back towards home. While all the official fireworks were going off, there was a constant barrage of backyard stuff. Some small but there was continuous stream of larger stuff, some going up a few hundred feet. It was a great show and from above it looked like one continuous show across the city. It was all fun and games untill we were landing where I had fireworks going off all around the airport. Maybe they were not shot from the airport property but it looked like they were coming up feet from the fence.
There was a layer of smoke drifting across final, visibility was still good but it looked ominous and with the flashes, it was all quite distracting. We still managed to find the runway and have a safe but not as smooth as normal arrival. Pictures are all courtesy of CC, I was way too busy flying to get any snapshots...
